The present invention relates to motor vehicles and in particular to convertible motor vehicles.
With convertible vehicles, when the hood is down air is deflected by the windscreen over the passenger compartment. However, turbulence towards the rear of the passenger compartment produces a backdraught which can be particularly uncomfortable for the occupants of the vehicle.
Hitherto, it has been proposed to locate a rigid board behind the passenger seats to deflect this backdraught. However, in order to obtain sufficient height to be effective, some difficulty has been encountered in locating the board in the space available behind the seats. In U.S. Pat. No. 4,838,604, the board is positioned so that it may be moved from a retracted position in which it extends downwardly behind the seats of the vehicle to an operative position in which it is located upright behind the seats. However, in order to move the board from the retracted to the operative position, it is necessary to move the seats requiring the vehicle to be stopped while this is done. In European Patent Specification No 0,233,777, a separate rigid board is mounted behind the seats, this however presents storage problems when the board is not in use.
An alternative approach is to use a flexible member, for example in the form of a roller blind as is also described in European Patent Specification No 0,233,777. This however requires a support structure, for example in the form of a roll-over bar, in order to support the upper edge of the flexible member at an appropriate height.
The present invention provides a wind deflector which may be located in the restricted space behind the seats of a vehicle, and may be moved between; a retracted position in which it occupies a minimum of space; and an operative position in which it extends upwardly behind the seats of the vehicle, to deflect any backdraughts; the wind deflector being movable between its retracted and operative positions without adjustment of any of the other components of the vehicle.